


As Lights Dance Me to Sleep

by harlequindreaming (armydoctor)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluffy, M/M, Short, because Jim can't sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-01
Updated: 2012-08-01
Packaged: 2017-11-11 05:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/474824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/pseuds/harlequindreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian's flat is never completely dark, even at three in the morning. But that's all right, because it puts Jim right off to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Lights Dance Me to Sleep

Sebastian's flat is never completely dark even at three in the morning, owing to the club diagonally across his apartment building and the twenty-four hour diner behind. It's never completely quiet, either; he lives in _that_ area of London, the part that doesn't really sleep. The neon lights blink in his bedroom window, and the buzz of traffic and chatter of night life drift in through the curtains at decibels not conducive to slumber. But despite that, and the fact that really, his flat's just utter shit, he's never taken up Jim's offer of moving in permanently. Maybe it's his deep-seated need for independence, or maybe it's because after years his flat does feel like home, but whatever the reason Sebastian likes it where he is and he intends to stay.

Sebastian's flat is never completely dark and quiet even at three in the morning, a fact Jim bemoans as he lets himself in with the spare key Sebastian gave him when the lines of their relationship had blurred and Jim had stopped closing his bedroom door. It's a sharp contrast to his posh Kensington penthouse, with its expensive furnishings and luxuriously peaceful environment. The couch is propped up with a brick. The ratio of ashtrays to surfaces is 3:1. The paint job beneath the wallpaper is disintegrating and he doesn't even want to know what's stained the ceiling. And yet the minute he's quietly shut the door behind him, the tension leaks out of his muscles and his breathing slows. He picks his way over the mess on the floor, shucking his suit jacket as he goes.  
  
Sebastian's sound asleep on his mattress, shirtless and tangled up in sheets, arm trailing off the edge to the floor. There isn't a proper bedstead, but that's never bothered him. Jim knows that there are at least three guns sequestered under that mattress at various distances from Sebastian's person, not to mention the knives. The thought thrills and amuses him a little, the loyal little pet and his arms.  
  
Undoing his tie and the top three buttons of his shirt, Jim toes off his shoes and slips down into the hollow Sebastian's created with his body, the space around his arm and torso and knees that's pleasantly warm. Immediately his bodyguard comes to, grunting, hand snapping toward the nearest gun even before his mind can pull itself fully from sleep. But then Jim chuckles, and Sebastian relaxes, hand shifting downward to curl around the angel bones of Jim's back.  
  
"Thought you hated it here," he grumbles, voice roughened by smoking and sleep.  
  
"Need to sleep," Jim replies, tucking himself up more securely into Sebastian's leftover space. He closes his eyes and one, two, he's drifting off.  
  
Sebastian's apartment is never completely dark and quiet even at three in the morning, and so it thoroughly surprises him when Jim falls asleep so easily. Even on the best of night's his boss's sleep is restless, curled up on his five hundred thread count sheets and goose feather pillows, in the silence of his ridiculously posh flat. Sebastian's never actually spent the night in Jim's bed, only on the couch, but he's heard and seen enough to know how little Jim sleeps. But right now there are snuffles and whistles on his bare arm, and toes wiggling against his ankle, and no clicks of a phone or mutters of a scheme.  
  
It brings a tiny smile to Sebastian's lips, it does, the sight of Jim Moriarty sleep-mumbling on his tatty sheets, and so he adjusts the covers so they're around them both, and resists the urge to tangle their ankles. The bright pink of the neon lights dances over them both, and someone shrieks down the block, and three motorcycles speed by, and Sebastian curls around Jim a little more protectively and lets himself drift off as well. As his breathing slows he picks up on the fact that through the scents of smoke and booze and garbage and frying chicken, he can smell Jim's expensive cologne. It's good.


End file.
